Agile Methodology

As I mentioned in a post last week, I have consulting at a client site that uses an Agile Project Management Methodology.  As a Project Manager, I had thought that I have not used Agile before, however, I now understand that as a Project Manager / Developer for many years, I have previously been using an Agile methodology.

In my very first job, after leaving university, I was coding a 4GL, and our Project Management Methodology was DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Methodology).  I went on a course and actually became a DSDM Practitioner.  This was back in 1997.

It turns out that the new client uses DSDM Atern, which is the latest flavour of the methodology.  After looking through the library of information and standard documentation, including templates, many of the terminology and theory has not changed in the 16 years that have passed.

It turns out that where I thought I was quite a traditional Project Manager, that I am actually quite Agile and have been using DSDM for many years.  In fact, without realising it, I have introduced an Agile framework for Development Teams in many of my previous clients.

The first problem I will have is how I tailor the Agile framework to fit to an infrastructure project, which fit more towards a traditional waterfall approach.  An Agile framework would use iterations and time boxes, where you would use the MoSCoW principles to exclude certain items if they do not fit in the time frame.  However, I cannot just leave our a piece of infrastructure and everything involved will become a Must-Have.  I will explain MoSCoW in a future post. 

I have read a few articles on the Internet, where people have used Agile for Infrastructure projects, so I will do some reading and take some advice.

I have decided that the best way to learn the complete theory (again) is to become a PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner).  I have many years of experience using DSDM, as well as a previous qualification, so now it is time to pull this into my PMI examination stream, seeing as I already have the PMP and RMP.  I have just purchased the book called PMI-ACP Exam Prep by Mike Griffiths and hope that I can start to spend some time reading this to gain all of the theoretical knowledge over the coming weeks.

I am quite excited to start my new challenge of fitting a square peg into a round hole…